Traverse City's convention and visitors bureau chose next weekend to hold an Ironman Triathlon race through bucolic Benzie, Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties because a record number of public schools are starting classes before Labor Day this month.

In a business move aimed at replacing the dwindling number of Michigan families with school-age children vacationing in late August, northern Michigan's tourism mecca is using the Aug. 25 race to lure in affluent participants and childless fans of the grueling race of swimming, biking and running.

That declining in-state customer base is driven by a steadily increasing number of school districts asking the Michigan Department of Education for permission each year to sidestep a state law mandating that public schools start the school year after Labor Day.

"It's a way we're responding to the change," said Trevor Tkach, president and CEO of Traverse City Tourism. "This is a real thing. Northern Michigan — Traverse City — is losing business because more schools have waivers."

The 2005 law mandating the post-Labor Day school start has increasingly become irrelevant as the state has granted waivers to school districts that adopt so-called balanced calendars for more year-round education or start early for another academic reason, such as aligning its calendar with middle college programs or community college dual-enrollment classes for high school students.

"If a school district asks for a waiver, they almost always get them," said David Lorenz, vice president of Travel Michigan, the state agency that runs the Pure Michigan advertising campaign. "The law that was put together is somewhat feckless."

A ‘slow' death

In 2005, Michigan became one of just three states to direct taxpayer-funded public schools to start after the first Monday in September. The law also granted the state superintendent of public instruction the ability to grant waivers for districts that could make an academic case for opting out — a loophole that's widened in recent years.

The state education department has granted 196 public school districts and charter schools permission to open their doors this month, up from 154 districts and charters last year.

Starting school earlier

A record number of school districts and charter schools are opting out of a 2005 law requiring Michigan schools to begin their school year after the Labor Day holiday on the first weekend in September.2014: 662015: 1002016: 53*2017: 1252018: 1542019: 196**

* In 2016, the majority of waivers were granted to intermediate school districts, giving every public school in a county the ability to start school before Labor Day.** The 196 districts includes 47 intermediate school districts (ISDs), meaning there potentially dozens more schools opting out. The Michigan Department of Education does not track the total number of schools within an ISD that are starting school before Labor Day weekend.Source: Michigan Department of Education

Of those 196, 47 are intermediate school districts, creating countywide waivers in more than half of Michigan's counties for all local districts within the ISD's boundaries. The state does not track how many school districts within each ISD are opening before Labor Day.

"As more school districts have received waivers to start prior to Labor Day ... it's been death by a thousand paper cuts," Tkach said. "It didn't turn on 200 all at once. It's just been a slow and painful reality."

The number of schools opting out has nearly tripled since 2014, with districts in Clarkston, Dearborn, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Lake Orion, Saline, Troy, Warren and even the vacation destinations of Holland, Houghton Lake and Suttons Bay opting to start school before the Labor Day holiday.

Some school districts in northern Michigan tourism towns are starting school in August to hold classes Tuesday through Thursday in order to knock out a few of the 180 days they're legally required to be instructing schoolchildren annually. In other cases, they're hedging against unpredictable snow days, like the ones that piled up for school districts last winter during the sub-zero polar vortex.

"It should be a local decision. In some communities, it might be quite contrary to do a pre-Labor Day start," said Scott Reynolds, superintendent of the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, a three-county ISD in the northeast Lower Peninsula.

Last year, the district obtained a blanket waiver for its four local school districts to start early to align its middle college program with Alpena Community College's calendar.

"It's a tough situation. We don't want to see local businesses lose revenue," Reynolds said. "But ultimately our goal is to graduate students who've had an optimal learning experience."

Boosting tourism

Education advocacy groups and their allies have long been critical of the post-Labor Day school start mandate on grounds that it was imposed by former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and a Republican-controlled Legislature during Michigan's early 2000s decade-long recession with the stated public policy goal of boosting the bottom lines of hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions across both peninsulas.

Granholm said at the time the mandate was needed to give a "jump-start to a segment of our economy that badly needed a boost."

Dale G. Young

Tourists and beach-goers flock to Grand Haven State Park to enjoy the waters of Lake Michigan.

"I recall being just appalled that the whole conversation was what was in the best interest of tourism," said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who voted against the legislation in 2005 as a member of the state House of Representatives.

"There was very little conversation or consideration about what it meant for the education of our kids," Whitmer said in a recent interview. "And that should have been front and center and, frankly, the only thing that was impacting our decision."

There is some evidence that the post-Labor Day mandate spurred the tourism business as policymakers intended — and not just Up North.

A 2016 study conducted by the East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group found hotel room stays in Michigan rose by between 40,000 to 44,000 in 2007 — the first full year the school calendar law too effect.

That resulted in a $4.5 million to $5.2 million increase in tourism spending, according to Anderson Economic Group, which conducted the study for the Michigan Lodging and Tourism Association.

The statewide hotel occupancy rate rose to 68.5 percent in August 2007 compared with 66.4 percent the previous year and 66 percent in August 2005, according to the hotel industry data-tracking firm STR Inc.

The law may matter less now. Last year, hoteliers across Michigan as a whole had their best months of August and September in at least 14 years, with statewide occupancy rates of 75.5 percent and 70 percent, respectively, according to STR's tracking data.

Room sales data analyzed by Anderson Economic Group revealed the biggest beneficiary in the two weeks leading up to Labor Day was southeast Michigan, which captured at least 40 percent of the additional room nights. The northern Lower Peninsula and southwest Michigan followed, with at least 20 percent and 10 percent of the room extra nights.

"There's more at stake here than I think people are giving credit," Tkach said. "This decision was made clearly to try to spur economic activity not only in northern Michigan, but throughout the state."

There's a workforce factor at play, too.

Teenage workers are "critical to our economy," Tkach said, especially when the overall workforce is crimped by labor shortages in skilled professions.

"We don't have the population to support all of the customers," he said.

High school workers ages 15 to 18 fill a gap in the workforce, particularly in early August when college students leave to go back to school, said Steve Loftis, owner of Harbor Restaurants, a group of five restaurants in Grand Haven.

But summer jobs also fill a gap in the educational experiences young people need to learn basic skills, such as communicating with customers, teamwork and meeting deadlines, Loftis said.

"We're educators as well," said Loftis, who owns Snug Harbor, Jelly's, Dee-Lite Bar & Grill, Theatre Bar and the Grand Seafood & Oyster Bar in Grand Haven. "We help educate kids on the other side of the equation. And to diminish the idea that we're not educators is a mistake."

Change the law?

Whitmer said she favors repealing the 2005 law and having "a serious conversation" statewide about adopting balanced calendars, where students would get a six-week summer break from late June to early August.

"Balanced calendars are things that are really staving off the education loss that happens over the summer, and that's disproportionately felt by kids in poverty," the governor said.

Dale G. Young

Tourists and beach-goers flock to Grand Haven State Park to enjoy the waters of Lake Michigan and the sunny days of Summer before school resumes. The Grand Haven Light and South Pier are in the background.

He doesn't see a need to change the law given the flexibility of the waiver system.

"Every time this topic comes up, I get an outpouring of support for the way it currently exists with starting school after Labor Day," Cole told Crain's. "It's like clockwork — the conversation fires up, I get the outpouring of communications coming primarily from my small businesses."

Reynolds said the law should be changed to grant locally elected school boards the power to set their own calendars — and get rid of the burdensome paperwork involved in applying for a waiver from the Department of Education.

"Are we creating a structure that's unnecessary and inefficient?" Reynolds asked rhetorically. "That would be the argument I would raise."

Lorenz, the state's top tourism official, suggests the school year could stretch further into June, leaving the two warmest months of the year — July and August — unencumbered for summer travel.

"Families tell our industry that they want July and August free of the need to be home for school time," Lorenz said. "Like this year, May and June were not too good weather-wise — cold, rainy, pretty bad actually."

At Traverse City's tourism bureau, the organization is changing its marketing campaign to focus on selling childless millennials, singles and empty nesters on vacationing in late August or the first few weeks of September before the cooler fall sweeps in from Lake Michigan.

"We're casting our net wider to a specific audience that we think we can convert," Tkach said. "I've kind of accepted the fact that whether the law changes or not, whoever wants this waiver is going to get it. So we've got to do business differently."